The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) today issued its first two orders on Order No. 1000 compliance filings, focusing on the regional planning requirements of the landmark transmission rule.

Order No. 1000 requires public utility transmission providers to improve transmission planning processes and allocate costs for new transmission facilities to beneficiaries of those facilities. It also requires public utility transmission providers to align transmission planning and cost allocation. These changes will remove barriers to development of transmission facilities.

In the first order, FERC rejected a proposal by Alcoa Power Generating Inc. (Yadkin) and the North Carolina utility subsidiaries of Duke Energy Corp. for failing to form a transmission planning region that meets the regional scope requirements of Order No. 1000.

The rule states that a single public utility transmission provider, by itself, cannot satisfy the regional scope requirement. Duke Energy Carolinas LLC and Carolina Power and Light Company (Duke-Progress) comprise a single transmission provider for the purpose of complying with this requirement, the Commission said. The inclusion of Yadkin’s very limited transmission facilities, which currently only exist to serve its hydroelectric facility, is not enough to create a transmission planning region of sufficient regional scope to comply with Order No. 1000. Duke-Progress and Yadkin have 90 days to submit new compliance filings.

In today’s second order, FERC waived the regional transmission planning requirements for Maine Public Service Company (MPS), citing a unique geographic and electrical situation that makes it impossible for MPS to meet the regional scope requirement. However, MPS must comply with the requirement that its local transmission planning process consider transmission needs driven by public policy requirements.

MPS has 90 days to make a filing that, among other things, defines public policy requirements and describes how its local transmission planning process will identify transmission needs driven by those requirements.